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A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth CenturyBeers, Henry A. (Henry Augustin)

History

A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century

Name: A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century
Author: Beers, Henry A. (Henry Augustin)

Beers, Henry A. (Henry Augustin)

English literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism; Romanticism -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century

But from this same kind of internal evidence, Wordsworth draws just the
opposite conclusion.  "The phantom was begotten by the snug embrace of an
impudent Highlander upon a cloud of tradition.  It traveled southward,
where it was greeted with acclamation, and the thin consistence took its
course through Europe upon the breath of popular applause.[12]. . .  Open
this far-famed book!  I have done so at random, and the beginning of the
epic poem 'Temora,' in eight books, presents itself.  'The blue waves of
Ullin roll in light.  The green hills are covered with day.  Trees shake
their dusky heads in the breeze.  Gray torrents pour their noisy streams.
Two green hills with aged oaks surround a narrow plain.  The blue course
of a stream is there.  On its banks stood Cairbar of Atha.  His spear
supports the king: the red eyes of his fear are sad.  Cormac rises on his
soul with all his ghastly wounds. . .'  Having had the good fortune to be
born and reared in a mountainous country, from my very childhood I have
felt the falsehood that pervades the volumes imposed upon the world under
the name of Ossian.  From what I saw with my own eyes, I knew that the
imagery was spurious.  In nature everything is distinct, yet nothing
defined into absolute, independent singleness.  In MacPherson's work it
is exactly the reverse: everything (that is not stolen) is in this manner
defined, insulated, dislocated, deadened, yet nothing distinct.  It will
always be so when words are substituted for things.  To say that the
characters never could exist; that the manners are impossible; and that a
dream has more substance than the whole state of society, as there
depicted, is doing nothing more than pronouncing a censure which
MacPherson defied. . .  Yet, much as these pretended treasures of
antiquity have been admired, they have been wholly uninfluential upon the
literature of the country.  No succeeding writer appears to have caught
from them a ray of inspiration; no author in the least distinguished has
ventured formally to imitate them, except the boy Chatterton, on their
first appearance. . .  This incapability to amalgamate with the
literature of the Island is, in my estimation, a decisive proof that the
book is essentially unnatural; nor should I require any other to
demonstrate it to be a forgery, audacious as worthless.  Contrast, in
this respect, the effect of MacPherson's publication with the 'Reliques'
of Percy, so unassuming, so modest in their pretensions."

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth CenturyBeers, Henry A. (Henry Augustin)

History

A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century

Beers, Henry A. (Henry Augustin)

English literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism; Romanticism -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century

But from this same kind of internal evidence, Wordsworth draws just the
opposite conclusion.  "The phantom was begotten by the snug embrace of an
impudent Highlander upon a cloud of tradition.  It traveled southward,
where it was greeted with acclamation, and the thin consistence took its
course through Europe upon the breath of popular applause.[12]. . .  Open
this far-famed book!  I have done so at random, and the beginning of the
epic poem 'Temora,' in eight books, presents itself.  'The blue waves of
Ullin roll in light.  The green hills are covered with day.  Trees shake
their dusky heads in the breeze.  Gray torrents pour their noisy streams.
Two green hills with aged oaks surround a narrow plain.  The blue course
of a stream is there.  On its banks stood Cairbar of Atha.  His spear
supports the king: the red eyes of his fear are sad.  Cormac rises on his
soul with all his ghastly wounds. . .'  Having had the good fortune to be
born and reared in a mountainous country, from my very childhood I have
felt the falsehood that pervades the volumes imposed upon the world under
the name of Ossian.  From what I saw with my own eyes, I knew that the
imagery was spurious.  In nature everything is distinct, yet nothing
defined into absolute, independent singleness.  In MacPherson's work it
is exactly the reverse: everything (that is not stolen) is in this manner
defined, insulated, dislocated, deadened, yet nothing distinct.  It will
always be so when words are substituted for things.  To say that the
characters never could exist; that the manners are impossible; and that a
dream has more substance than the whole state of society, as there
depicted, is doing nothing more than pronouncing a censure which
MacPherson defied. . .  Yet, much as these pretended treasures of
antiquity have been admired, they have been wholly uninfluential upon the
literature of the country.  No succeeding writer appears to have caught
from them a ray of inspiration; no author in the least distinguished has
ventured formally to imitate them, except the boy Chatterton, on their
first appearance. . .  This incapability to amalgamate with the
literature of the Island is, in my estimation, a decisive proof that the
book is essentially unnatural; nor should I require any other to
demonstrate it to be a forgery, audacious as worthless.  Contrast, in
this respect, the effect of MacPherson's publication with the 'Reliques'
of Percy, so unassuming, so modest in their pretensions."

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century

A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century

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